Tuesday, 18 June 2013

Qatar Porsche sells 10% interest back to founders

REUTERS

DUBAI/BERLIN

QATAR Holding, the investment arm of the Gulf State sovereign wealth fund, has sold its 10 percent stake in Porsche to the luxury car manufacturer family shareholders, four years after it first invested in the company.

Qatar Holding, which owns interests in some of the world's largest companies, said it was the ordinary shares in the car maker sold to the families Porsche and Purcell. It not to mention the value of the transaction.

The sovereign fund arm said it remained committed to the integrated Automotive Industry Holding including Volkswagen and Porsche through its 17 percent stake in VW. Europe's largest car manufacturer sealed last year the purchase of the Porsche car-making business after a merger not in a tangle of legal disputes.

"This transaction results as a logical step after the creation of the integrated Automotive Industry Holding Company between Volkswagen and Porsche AG when completed in 2012," Qatar company said in the statement.

Neither party gave no details of the price paid for the stake. Porsche SE shares were trading at 60.76 euros per share on Monday, up 0.36 percent on the day.

Porsche was forced to sell a 10-percent vote importance on keeping Qatar in 2009 as a way to prop up its strained Finances. The sale of Qatar gave outsiders participate in the debt saddled family-controlled auto-group for the first time since it began construction of Porsche cars in 1948.

The Porsche holding company, controlled by the families Porsche and Purcell, still has about 51 percent of VW ordinary shares, making it one of the three major interest in the Group of German car.

VW, Porsche now owns in return all of core business, the automotive division that models such as the iconic 911 sports car and the Cayenne sport-utility vehicle makes.

"This is a matter between the Porsche/Purcell families and Qatar," Porsche SE spokesman Albrecht Bamler told Reuters by telephone on Monday, falling to work.

"This (sale by Qatar) is positive" because the game back into the hands of the families Porsche/Purcell times is "Bamler added.

Porsche and Volkswagen had first agreed a full merger in August 2009, after Porsche racked up more than 10 billion euros of debt in a failed attempt to take over VW, sparks feuds between the Porsche and Purcell family dynasty.

The integrated Automotive Industry Holding to which reference is made in the Declaration of Qatar is the Group of brands that now make up Volkswagen global business after it came to terms with Porsche after several years of arguing.

"By assuming that its investment in Volkswagen and Porsche in 2009, Qatar Holding acted as a facilitator that paves the way for the creation of the integrated Automotive Industry Holding," said the Fund. Also on June 11, Qatar Holding said it participated in a 1.2 billion mandatory convertible Note sales by Volkswagen as an anchor investor.